A cognitive approach to the self assumes that differences in the way individuals categorize, generalize, or interpret their behavior, or in the way they represent themselves in thought and memory, contribute significantly to differences in individual behavior. The proposed research will explore this view of the self through an investigation of the schemas used to represent and process social information. The self is conceptualized as a set of self-schemas or knowledge structures that are developed to understand, explain, and integrate behavior in particular areas. This proposal requests a renewal for a previous grant (MH29753) which examined the content and structure of a variety of self-schemas, and provided converging evidence for the schema construct and for the idea that schemas result in the differential processing of information about the self. The objectives of this research are: 1) to continue the investigation of the general structure and function of schemas relevant to the self, with a particular emphasis on developing a model for how schemas influence social information processing; 2) to determine what, if any, unique features are characteristic of schemas relevant to the self-concept or self-system; and 3) to examine the influence of self-schemas on the perception of others as a step in exploring the behavioral consequences of self-schemas. The proposed studies will investigate the influence of schemas on 1) the content, confidence, and processing time for schema-related predictions, evaluations, and decisions; 2) the quality, content, and patterns of memory for schema-related materials; 3) differential attention to, and learning of, schema-related material, and 4) information-seeking and behavioral interaction in schema-relevant domains.